Hannah - Madrid Week 7

Hi everyone,

Sagrada Familia

Last week the other students and I all went to Barcelona! Luckily, some of us got Friday off from work because of Corpus Christi and were able to leave a couple hours early. The first thing I did when I got there was go to the beach with an old friend from high school who was also in Barcelona to study Spanish. It was an amazing change from Madrid where it’s 10 degrees hotter and there aren’t any nearby bodies of water. Even though it was only June, the beach was full of people. In the typical vacation months of July and August, it apparently gets so crowded that it’s impossible to walk through the mass of beach towels and people.

The UofM gang

The next day, we planned to go to all the main tourist attractions: Sagrada Familia, Park Guell and Casa Batllo. The Sagrada Familia hasn’t been finished yet and won’t be until 2026, almost 150 years after Gaudi started working on it! Regardless, it was a beautiful basilica with a distinct, architectural style that I had never seen before. I’m not really an expert on architecture so it’s hard to even explain its unique features and it’s even hard to get a sense of the place through pictures. Park Guell seemed even more like a fairytale setting because some of the structures there had a cartoon-like quiality to them. There were buildings decorated as gingerbread houses and quirky sculptures of different animals. Further into the park, there is a balcony area where we could overlook most of Barcelona. The view appears in all the pictures of Barcelona on the Internet and postcards so it was rewarding finally to see it for myself. Though we made our way to Casa Batllo, another one of Gaudi’s work, we weren’t able to go in. Apparently the external part of the building is supposed to look like a dragon, but personally I thought the comparison was a bit of a stretch.

The ceiling...

Park Guell

Can you see the dragon?

The next day, we walked around the city, through its famous gothic neighborhood. Afterwards we headed to the beach one last time before heading back to Madrid. Overall, it was an amazing weekend in Barcelona! The only low point of the trip was when I opened my purse on Sunday to discover that my salmon sandwich had leaked all over my things. While I have a purse that now smells like salmon, I at least have some great memories of Barcelona!

Hasta luego,

Hannah